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\u00a0 Over the last decade the United States, Russian and Chinese governments have each been implicated in internationally recognized\u00a0plots to subvert domestic and international law to their own benefit\u00a0in which the individual countries\u2019 interactions with a domestic extremist element played a pivotal role. While each of these events has\u00a0garnered widespread media and academic attention, little focus has\u00a0been directed at the way in which each Great Power interacted with\u00a0domestic extremism in order to advance its goals. This study uses a\u00a0Webarian comparative analysis to describe the Chinese internment\u00a0of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the Russian annexation of Crimea and the\u00a0radicalization of the Republican party in the United States, and how\u00a0domestic extremism was in each case co-opted in order to achieve\u00a0unpopular but critical goals. This study finds that domestic extremist\u00a0co-optation is a proven strategy commonly employed by powerful\u00a0authoritarian regimes around the world to achieve the most imperative and sensitive policy goals. Domestic extremist co-optation as\u00a0a foreign policy strategy is characterized by the spread of disinformation, the promotion of violence and the concealment of the party\u00a0responsible. This study identifies three archetypes of domestic extremist co-optation: the \u2018scapegoat\u2019, the \u2018proxy\u2019 and the \u2018base,\u2019 and\u00a0empowers future research to increase that number.<\/p>\n